i'm discovering the sublime joys of natural plant fibers. literally don't know how to knit or crochet or anything and barely know how to sew but extracting and spinning fibers is apparently like the golden ratio of physical and mental activities for me. It's so much fun I will lose hours at a time just HONED in on my yarn and stuff.
Milkweed is so awesome as a plant oh my god. It produces ultra-soft seed fluffs that apparently can be spun if you're careful, the fibers are so smooth they can easily pull apart but making three strands and spinning them into a three-ply yarn seems promising, seems like it would be strong enough to work with. The seed fluffs were historically used widely as stuffing for jackets and pillows and the like, which they are amazing for. Milkweed fluff is way warmer than wool apparently? And on top of it, it has this gorgeous silky sheen. It's SO pretty and it's SO soft.
But the milkweed stems also have bast fiber which is very strong and is obtained by taking the dead stems and beating the crap out of them until the woody stuff is all broken and the fibers separate. This stuff is strong and soft and also has a nice sheen to it and I'm excited to see what could be made from it
Altogether it's a shit ton of usable material per plant, all of which is harvested after the plant dies back for the winter, not affecting its ability to regrow the next spring. With common milkweed, the stems can be greater than 6ft tall and the seed pods are big and each containing a lot of fluff. I filled a whole plastic grocery bag with seed pods, easy, just by walking through a field with lots of milkweed.
Apparently an old common name for milkweed is "wild cotton" which strongly suggests that the seed fluffs have been used for textile purposes
I've also learned from browsing foraging sites, the Myaamia ethnobotanical database and various books that Milkweed has an insane amount of culinary uses. It must be cooked because of the poisons in it that discourage munching by predators, but you can eat the leaves, the flowers, the underdeveloped seed pods (apparently they are compared to cheese?! And the flowers color drinks pink??)
like whoa! so much benefit from one single plant!
I'm working with Dogbane (Apocynonum cannabinum) bast fibers right now and they're sooooo great. Not only is beating the fibers a ton of fun, the fibers are a really beautiful shiny chestnut-blonde sort of color and very strong and fine and soft.
Dogbane fibers also have this lovely fragrance that is like a blend of cedar and forest soil and old books. Milkweed has its own distinct fragrance, very subtle, that I struggle to describe and don't like as much, but it's cool to notice that it has a smell.
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